And yet, if it was an american parent making those decisions for their children, we might applaud them as more responsible than the average parent who lets their kid get up to anything online, unmonitored.

Let's stop demonising one of the oldest, and traditionally if not currently most advanced civilisations in the world, OK? Yes, they make some poor decisions. Are they evil, or completely misguided compared to the western cultures where kids are running into schools and shooting their classmates before shooting themselves? Perhaps not.

So don't go out and bash the fuck out of China for this. Yes, they are controlling the Chinese children's freedom. Just like how I wasn't able to buy my own booze when I was 16. There are better things to criticize China for.

Being prevalent does not make injustice less unjust. France survives just fine with its lax alcohol policies, so allowing people to buy booze at age 16 is clearly practical. We've decided that we'd rather lose freedom than require parents to actually do their jobs, and so has China, but that doesn't make it right.

You do know that China is now extremely capitalist, right? Since Mao's demise and Xiaoping's rise to power, the shift towards capitalist economic tendencies was abrupt. This is the guy who said "We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries". China is the country that is planning on reforming the VAT and cutting billions from (privately owned) corporate taxes.